"Jacksonville State outplayed us for two straight days pretty convincingly in every capacity of the game," UAB head coach Brian Shoop said.

All of JSU's seven runs came in the first three innings. JSU's four runs in the third inning were unearned, as the Blazers made two errors, both by shortstop Tanner Bryant.

The first came on what could have been an inning-ending double play and the second came on a wild throw home.

JSU had nine hits. Griff Gordon went 3-for-3. Stephen Bartlett hit a two-run homer in the second inning and Paschal Petrongelo had two hits. Taylor Shields pitched five innings of three-hit shutout ball to get the win. JSU improved to 2-3, while UAB dropped to 2-3.

BAD START: Ruben Tresgallo got the start for the Blazers, his first appearance of the season. Tresgallo, a hard-throwing righty, walked the first batter and gave up an RBI triple to Gordon. UAB had bullpen action in the first and Tresgallo was pulled for Turner Lee in the second after walking three and giving up two hits and three runs in 1 1/3 innings.

"Ruben's got a good arm that has struggled at times with command," Shoop said. "Like anybody else when you struggle with command, you put people on and when you miss, you miss in the middle. Obviously that's not what we were hoping for after being down the entire game from the first batter yesterday and getting down that quick.

"Certainly Ruben's not trying to do that."

OFFENSIVE WOES: UAB had gone 22 innings without scoring until the ninth. Griffin Gum hit a sacrifice fly for the first run and Ivan De Jesus cleared the bases for the next three. John Frost flied out to the warning track to end the game. UAB only had two 1-2-3 innings in the game, though.

"Hitting's contagious," Shoop said. "Of course you're concerned. You don't want to go however many innings we went in a row without scoring. You saw some signs of life in the second half of the game. We hit some balls with some authority at them.

"Hopefully the ninth inning jump starts us for the weekend."

Jeff Schalk and Harry Clark each went 2-for-3 for UAB.

LOOKING AHEAD: UAB hosts Xavier for a three-game series beginning Friday at 3 p.m. The teams also play Saturday at 1 p.m. and Sunday at noon. Xavier opened the season losing two of three at College of Charleston.

UAB will change the pitching rotation. Tanner Bryant, who got the win last Sunday against Southern Illinois, will move to Friday, while James Naile will pitch again on Saturday and Sunday's starter is to be announced.

Turner Lee, who started last Friday, gave up four hits and four unearned runs in relief against JSU on Thursday.

"We thought he needed to get back on the mound," Shoop said of Lee. "Tanner's starting Friday, made that decision after Sunday. Naile Saturday. We didn't want Turner to sit for a long time. Regardless of what happened today, we were going to throw a lot of people so they didn't sit for too long."